Blizzard Arcade to replace Marketplace, monetise mods

The re-christened Blizzard Arcade will finally allow creative types turn the hours they pour into mods and custom maps into delicious cashmoney.

Formerly known as the Blizzard Marketplace, the Blizzard Arcade revamp was announced at Blizzcon.

The new design “will serve as a foundation for custom games on Battle.net going forward”, and will be extended to support premium offerings at a later date, allowing creators to make money from their efforts should they so choose.

“Allowing custom game makers to charge for their games will incentivize higher quality custom games, benefitting players and game creators,” the developer noted.

The new interface should make it easier to find quality mods, as it sports a number of assessment features like rating games and categories based on popularity. One particularly interesting addition is a special queue of “Fun or Not” players which will empty into open lobbies to test out new and obscure mods and custom games based on them.

Blizzard Arcade will support all editions of Starcraft II at launch, and existing Starcraft II mod tools will see a major overhaul enabling new features such as custom cinematics. It is expected to launch before upcoming instalment Heart of the Swarm.

The original marketplace design was expected to arrive day-and-date with Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, but Blizzard dropped the ball.